So Hypothetical
by Ijemanja
Summary: It's summer, and things are getting sort of weird. KristyShannon


Notes: Written to fufill a request at yuletidetreasure dot org.

Summary: It's summer, and things are getting sort of weird.

Pairing: Shannon/Kristy

Title: So Hypothetical

x

You're not the kind of girl who draws flowers and unicorns. Or the initials of boys you like in big dopey hearts all over notebooks at school.

Shannon is, though.

You were at her house one afternoon supervising a puppy play-date between Astrid and Shannon (Shannon the dog, that is), and saw her homework spread out across the kitchen table.

You asked who 'G.B.' was, and she rolled her eyes.

'Those are my old biology notes. I'm revising,' she said, as she reached over and scribbled it out. 'Ugh. So last term.'

She flipped her hair back and gave you an embarrassed smile. Then you went outside to play frisbee with the dogs, and you never did find out who G.B. was.

You remember that, the initials, the little cupid's arrow through the heart, months later.

It's summer and you're hanging out by Shannon's pool. She's stretched out on the deck doing a quiz in Cosmo. It's called 'Are You a Good Girlfriend?' or something dumb like that.

'Do you even have a boyfriend?' you ask her.

You know she doesn't - you're pretty sure - but she's the one filling in the little boxes.

'No. This is more of a hypothetical thing. Listen - 'he wants to spend a night out with the boys. Do you A, tell him no, if he really loved you he'd spend all his time with you; B, tell him it's fine, then secretly obsess over why he needs friends when he has you; or C, tell him to have a good time, and organise a girl's night out for yourself.' I know 'C' makes me a good girlfriend, but 'B' just seems more plausible, somehow.'

You think all this stuff is pointless, but it's a boring afternoon, and it's not like you've got anything better to do, so you play along. Sort of.

'I guess you're a bad girlfriend, then. I feel so sorry for your hypothetical boyfriend.'

'Okay, I'll pick 'C'. Jeez.' But she's smirking, tapping her pencil against her slightly up-turned lips. 'And what would you pick, smartass? 'A', right?'

'No.' You reach your leg over and poke her side with you big toe. 'I'd pick 'C', I guess. Who cares if your boyfriend goes somewhere without you? If I ever get that crazy over a guy, I hope someone shoots me.'

Shannon gives you an odd look, but then she just raises her eyebrows.

'Okay,' she drawls. ''C' then.'

And she goes on to do the next question in silence.

You wrap your arms around your knees. The sun is really hot on your shoulders and back. Should be wearing a hat, of course, but your nose is already on its third peel of the summer. Seems kind of a lost cause, at this point.

Besides, none of your baseball caps go with this bathing suit. Mary-Anne calls it a 'tankini' - a fact which almost made you refuse to try it on in the first place, it sounded so lame.

But it's okay, really. Boy-leg bottoms, and a top that won't fly off if you do a bomb dive into the pool. And according to people far more knowledgeable than you in such areas, it's also reasonably trendy.

Even Stacy approves.

Shannon's wearing a normal bikini, of course. It's pretty - ice-cream colours, pink, brown and white. And it's tiny. Of course, her pristine bathing-beauty routine shouldn't fool anyone. She can pull a mean bomb dive herself, when she wants to.

Shannon rolls over on her back then, magazine abandoned.

'I'm an okay girlfriend with slightly insecure tendencies. And I'm bored,' she announces.

You shade your eyes with your hand. Your hair is damp and itchy on the back of your neck.

'I need another swim,' is your response, 'Or I have to go inside. I'm boiling.'

'Go ahead,' she says without opening her eyes or moving, or otherwise indicating in any way that she's still alive.

So you get up and go round to the shallow end and step right into the water. It's a big pool, and part of it is shaded by these white, over-hanging sail-type things. You lap straight over so you'll be out of the sun and then you just float there a while.

You've been spending quite a bit of time with Shannon this summer. The past two years since you moved here she was away at some ritzy camp for rich kids. Like, they go yachting and stuff. Seriously. Yachting.

But this year her dad has her doing work experience a few days a week at his law firm. And though you still sort of wish you could spend all day at Mary-Anne or Claudia's house like you did all summer long when you were kids, now Shannon's the girl across the street. It's not so bad, either, now that you've gotten used to it.

Most of her friends are away at camp or vacationing in exotic places all over the world; yours are across town. The scale is different, but you're still more or less in the same boat. Yacht. Whatever.

'How's work?' you call out, and Shannon rolls over again (like a rotisserie chicken, you can't help thinking) to sun her back again, and also to look at you as she speaks.

'All day yesterday, I helped the office manager for the Environment and Planning department take inventory of office supplies. It was even more boring than it sounds. My dad wants me to learn responsibility, and to know how it all works from the ground up and stuff, but what I'm really learning is why people go into law in the first place. It's so they never have to do a job that involves counting boxes of A4 envelopes.'

It's such a stuck up thing to say. A year ago it would have earned her a sharp retort. But today it only makes you smile.

You're kind of glad, in a way, to know she'll always be just a bit of a snob. It's reassuring, though you can't say why, exactly.

She just seems so different from the girl you first met - that prissy, snobby, private-school princess. And here you are in your powder-blue tankini, swimming in a huge pool, in the garden of a mansion. And if she'll always be a rich kid at heart, then maybe a part of you will always be Kristy Thomas, scruffy, loud-mouth tomboy, too.

And you don't ever want to let go of that girl, no matter how much your life has changed these past few years.

'Tomorrow,' Shannon continues when you don't say anything for a while, 'I think I get to sort mail.'

And you laugh, folding your arms on the edge of the pool and resting your chin on them while the rest of you floats in the water.

'Tomorrow,' you say, 'I'm taking Karen and Andrew to the waterslide park.'

'I hate you.'

'And I love you too, Shannykins.'

'Jerk-face.'

'Snob.'

According to your brothers, fifteen is too old to still be poking out your tongue at people. But you and Shannon haven't got that memo, yet.

That's reassuring, too.

x

'So hypothetically speaking,' Shannon says, chewing on a grape - and you look away because you really, really hate seeing people talking with their mouths full - 'What if someone you knew came out. You know. As in _came out_, came out.'

You snap your head back to look at her pretty fast.

You're sitting on stools at the kitchen bench, drinking ice tea and picking at a fruit platter Shannon dug out of the fridge. And the juice from a pineapple chunk starts dripping down your wrist as you stare at her.

'Are you -?' you start to say uncertainly, and Shannon snorts.

'We're playing hypotheticals, Kristy. I was just wondering. Would you, like, freak out, or would you be okay with it?'

You can feel yourself frowning, and so you tell yourself not to take it so seriously. It's just hypothetical. Right.

'I guess it would depend. If it was a friend, of course I'd be okay with it. If it was Watson, I think a little freaking out would be justified.'

Shannon laughs some more, and you blurt out: 'So you're not gay, right?'

Because apparently your mouth will have a mind of its own until the day you die.

Shannon just rolls her eyes. 'You're no good at this game.'

Which isn't an answer, you notice, but then, she's probably just teasing you. She does that. She tries to shock you with stuff, sometimes, that she's seen or done or even just heard about. She likes to make out that she's much more worldly and sophisticated than you. You don't mind agreeing with her, if 'worldly' means having been to parties where people spend all night throwing up (amongst other things) in the bushes and call it fun.

Then Shannon can be as worldly as she wants.

'So hypothetically,' she suddenly starts up again, and this time you groan and lay your head dramatically on the counter-top. 'Hypothetically,' she repeats, giggling, 'What would you think of a girl - just any normal teenage girl - who hadn't had a boyfriend in, like, years -'

'I'd say that being 'boy-crazy' has the word 'crazy' in it for a reason,' you interrupt, raising your head again.

'Shush! I'm not finished. So this girl hasn't had a boyfriend in ages, but not only that, she doesn't seem to want a boyfriend, or to even talk to boys who aren't her brothers. And she thinks that George Clooney is overrated.'

And even if you hadn't said that very thing last week when you were veging-out together watching 'ER', you'd know who she's talking about.

Subtlety isn't exactly one of Shannon's strong points.

'You think _I'm gay_?' you demand. Because it's not one of yours, either, actually.

She has the decency to abandon the game.

'I don't know, I guess not. It's just... you can see how people might think... I mean it's not like there's anything wrong with it.'

She shrugs.

'I like boys,' you say, and although you know how defensive you sound, you just can't help it. 'I like them just fine.'

'Okay,' she says immediately. 'I mean, like I said, I was just wondering.'

She bites into a huge strawberry and you drink some ice tea and a really awkward silence settles over the two of you.

You don't know what to say, and you don't know why you feel so weird. You really don't think there's anything wrong with it, either. Being gay. And Shannon was just asking. You're not even mad at her, really.

She tried to set you up with her cousin a month ago, when summer first started and you weren't really used to spending a lot of time together.

'He likes sporty girls,' she said. 'I told him about you. Go say hi.' And she gave you a little shove in the direction of a total stranger. 'He's not a snob, I promise,' she said when you just looked at her like she was crazy.

You were at a barbecue at her house - though no cookout you'd ever been to before used a catering service. Even the ones at your house these days still only involve big bowls of coleslaw and three-bean salad and Watson wearing a 'kiss the cook' apron.

A few days after the barbecue, when Shannon started speaking to you again, she promised to never try to set you up again. And you apologised for embarrassing her when you told her cousin you'd never need a boyfriend _that _badly.

And since then the subject of boys hasn't come up that much. Although now her asking whether you think Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron is better looking, which she did the other day, makes a little more sense.

So you haven't had a boyfriend in... a while. So what? Shannon hasn't talked about being interested in anybody since she broke up with a guy at her school just before the end of term. And you don't go around making random assumptions about -

'I kissed a girl once.'

Ice tea is not nearly so refreshing when it's coming out your nose.

Shannon tries not to laugh as you mop yourself up with a napkin, and you give her a dirty look.

'You couldn't have waited till I swallowed?' you grouse at her.

But it is pretty funny - disturbing conversation topic and all.

You end up shaking your head, grinning back at her when she says, 'What would have been the fun in that?'

'So, okay. Tell me what shocking thing you've been experimenting with lately, then,' you say.

And you steel yourself for a tale of some sordid drunken misstep or other.

But there isn't the triumphant glee at having gotten your attention on her face, as you expect. Instead she just looks thoughtful, sort of.

'It was last summer. At camp. She was a few years older than me and, I don't know. We were just up talking late one night, by ourselves, and -' Shannon shrugs. 'I don't know. It was nice. It wasn't weird or anything."

But she looks away and you can tell she's embarrassed.

'It's okay,' you say, hoping you sound reassuring. 'And it isn't weird.'

Because of course it isn't - not when you're talking about someone besides yourself, that is.

'Yeah, I know. My big lesbian experience. Everyone's doing it. It's practically the new black,' she jokes, a little harshly.

So you need to do some work on the whole reassurance thing. You wish Mary-Anne or Dawn were here - they're good at it, making people feel better.

On the other hand, you kind of wouldn't want them knowing about this conversation.

'Well you know me, always a few years behind the latest fashions,' you say, because if Shannon gets to make jokes, then so do you.

Shannon doesn't laugh - she props her chin up on her hand and pokes at a nectarine instead.

'I haven't told anyone else about that. Don't say anything to anybody,' she orders, looking at you sharply.

'Of course not. No way.'

And you mean, it, too.

'I guess that's why I was asking you about that thing before. I was kind of hoping... um,' she stops mid-sentence and straightens suddenly. 'Not hoping, I mean... You know. Just that you might understand or something.'

You don't really know, actually, what she means, but you don't say that.

'I do, I think.'

But the confusion must show on your face, because she just sighs, and laughs a little.

'It's okay.' She shakes her head. 'It doesn't matter.'

You eat a grape and hope that it really doesn't. Because you want to be a good friend, but this whole thing is unexpected and you know you're being kind of hopeless.

'Hey,' she says then, looking out the window. 'It's getting late.'

And it is, it's starting to get dark. Not that it's anywhere near your curfew, but: 'Yeah, Mom's expecting me home for dinner.'

You get up and she walks you out.

You came over wearing just your swimsuit and denim cut-offs, and you pulled those on when you came in from the pool earlier. So you just have to step back into the flip-flops you left at the front door, and you're ready to go.

Shannon leans against the door jamb, the hem of her sarong fluttering in the evening breeze. So is her hair, and you realise how pretty she looks standing there, and you don't usually notice things like that. You tell yourself you don't.

'Want to see a movie this weekend?' she says.

'Sure.'

'If I survive the next two days at the job from hell.'

'Think of it as a character-building experience,' you suggest.

She just smiles and lifts her hand in a brief wave.

You wave back and go jogging off down the long driveway, rubber soles flapping on the concrete.

When you get home, your mom is not, in fact, expecting you for dinner. Even though you weren't lying - you thought she would be. There's just a note on the refrigerator telling you to scrounge leftovers or order a pizza for dinner. The house is empty and you remember that David Michael is at a friend's house, that Karen and Andrew aren't coming till tomorrow, and that the other people who live here don't need to ask your permission to stay out after dark.

You decide to skip dinner for now.

You think about Shannon as you make your way through the house. When little Shannon jumps in through the doggy door and scrambles over to you, all tail-wagging enthusiasm after a whole half-day's absence, you bend down and give her a big hug.

It's never seemed so confusing that your dog and your friend have the same name.

You go upstairs, then, and you sit in the middle of your big bed, and you wonder why you feel like you just missed something. Something big. Like there was a moment when you should have said something - or done something - but didn't. A moment when Shannon was reaching out to you, maybe, only you weren't there. You just flaked out on her.

You think of her at home all alone in her big mansion, with you all alone here in yours, and you think how you could call her up and tell her that your family blew you off for dinner, and that she should come over for pizza. You've already spent all afternoon together, what's a few more hours? Any other day, you might have called her already.

But right now you're just going to sit here a while longer, with Shannon investigating your wastebasket over in the corner. And again, that would be puppy-Shannon, not people-Shannon.

You'll see people-Shannon on the weekend. And when you do, you'll act totally normal, as if people ask you if you're a lesbian and then share their own gay experience with you all the time.

As if you're not at all freaked out.

Except that you are, a little. You pride yourself on your honesty, and this? You sitting here hugging a pillow staring at nothing? Is you being at least a little freaked out. Only, a tiny part of you insists that it's not for the reason you would have expected.

One thing you know for sure. You're not letting Shannon pick the movie this weekend. Because Shannon likes romantic-comedies, and it's not like you're going on a date.

Except, you realise as you hug the pillow tighter, it almost, sort of, could be.

end


End file.
